EU has been a beacon of peace and democracy

WELL, well. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the EU by an impartial committee with no axe to grind – Norway is outside the EU.

Perhaps we can now expect a cascade of letters from Europhobes giving credit where it’s due. Or perhaps not (Yorkshire Post, October 13).

The consistent role of the EU has been to nourish and foster democracy across the 
continent.

This has been the key factor in stabilising relations between the countries so that the route to settling disputes has been through negotiation.

The much sneered-at European Court of Human Rights has been the symbol of the increasingly supranational dimension.

The age of power politics, defensive alliances, sabre rattling and arms races seems more and more dated by the year.

From: Dr David Hill, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

I AGREE that the EU has a right to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, but we have to look at the EU in its entirety to determine whether it is a worthy recipient.

There are pros and cons in this respect and where the EU did not stop wars in other countries happening when with enough political force it could have done so, as the leading economic block in the world. Indeed, it stood back with only rhetoric being heard when the Iraq and Afghan wars were intimated (prior to military offensives commencing) and where hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died since.

Is non-action a part cause and the reason why these deaths happened?

That is debatable, but where for an institution like the EU to be awarded the peace prize it has to show first, global leadership in this respect.